Focus: Birt's web

The BBC's former director-general is one of the best- connected men in Britain. Richard Woods and Nicholas Hellen unpick his cabal at the heart of government

To those inside the loop, John Birt is not the management-mad “Dalek” of his public image. He’s a much more subtle alien threat than that.

The nature of the beast was first identified at the Labour party conference in 1997 when Geoffrey Robinson summoned Birt, then director-general of the BBC, to his hotel suite for a showdown.

“You,” accused Robinson, “are part of a cabal.”

The cabal, Robinson went on, consisted of Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Sir Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary, Sir Terry Burns, then permanent secretary at the Treasury, Sir Robert Fellowes, then private secretary to the Queen, and Birt. Robinson, it seems, was determined that Gordon Brown, his patron, should not suffer at the hands of Birt’s BBC.

Whatever the reality of those fears, Robinson’s image of a cabal, or at least a clique, at the centre of power last week came to seem more prescient than